1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to integrated circuits and, more specifically, the present invention relates to integrated circuits that include power transistors.
2. Background Information
Electronic circuits using power transistors have to be designed according to the rating or size of the power transistors being used. The size of the power transistors being used influences their power handling capability, which is specified by the power transistor manufacturers. Since the packages used to house power transistors are limited in size by physical and economic constraints, the size of the power transistors that can be contained in a single package is similarly limited. To effectively extend the size of power transistors where necessary, it is therefore common to design electronic circuits using power transistors with two or more power transistors coupled together. The resulting combination of power transistors is typically controlled with a single control circuit consisting of control circuitry and a single driver circuit to drive the power transistors. Circuits using two or more power transistors coupled in this way require careful use of driver and control circuits, in addition to careful circuit board layout, appropriate to the characteristics of the type of power transistor being used.
Integrated circuits are available that integrate control circuitry, drivers and power transistors. The size of the power transistors used in these integrated circuits is also limited by the packages used to house the integrated circuits. In this case, coupling of additional external power transistors is usually not possible since the integrated power transistor driver circuitry is typically dedicated to the integrated power transistor and no means is provided for the user to access the necessary driver circuitry outputs. With integrated circuits where the outputs of the integrated power transistor driver circuitry are made available, the size and number of external power transistors that can be driven by the integrated driver circuitry is limited by the size of this integrated power transistor driver circuitry.